Fed Up
by Jimmy the Gothic Egg
Summary: Arguing is a bit like foreplay. You get all riled up and can't wait for what's next.


_Fed Up_

There was only one way to express Katara's current mood, and it involves one simple sentence:

Katara was _pissed off._

It involved Zuko, certainly. It involved his stupid mouth saying stupid things and making her yell until they finally agreed to leave each other alone, huffing off in different directions. When asked where she was going, she'd screamed something about water; Zuko had been able to ignore the calls. He was good at that.

The problem was, her excuse fell short when she realized she didn't know where any stream was. The closest thing she could find was a puddle. So she stood by it and glared at her reflection.

Supposedly, walks were supposed to clear the mind. This "supposedly" was quickly disproved when the infuriating, foul, utterly wretched _thing_ she'd walked away from was quickly walking towards her. He looked surprised. She did too. Mainly because he went in the opposite direction.

They stared at each other.

"Go away," Katara snapped.

Zuko tilted his head back. "Fine."

They stared some more. Neither made a move.

"Didn't you go the other way?" Katara asked, just to be sure.

"Yeah," Zuko answered.

There was less staring at each other and more staring at the path around them. Katara vaguely thought of the swamp and the attacking plants. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a tree move, but that could have just been her imagination.

A few minutes (hours? Seconds?) of silence passed. Katara went back to glaring, trying to find anything but Zuko to look at.

Katara stared at Rock. Rock said hello with a chipper smile and went back to being a rock. Katara decided to stare at Zuko, because if he said hello with a chipper smile… Well, she was sure it meant something horrible if he had anything resembling a smile on his face. She was quite sure that if he _did_ smile, it meant that he was about to squash something very annoying between his fingertips.

Katara thought about saying "Go away" again, but it seemed pointless. Zuko was staring at a spot beside her face as if he didn't want to stare at her, but couldn't help passing the occasional glance. After all the screaming earlier, they'd run out of things to talk about.

It seemed the only time they had anything to say to each other was when they fought.

Suddenly very afraid of the awkward silence, she decided to stir up an argument. She began to walk away. With nothing else to do, Zuko followed behind, at a safe distance, eying the puddle carefully just in case a water whip magically rose from it and struck him across the face.

"Stop following me," Katara said, hoping he wouldn't.

"I can go my own way," said Zuko.

"Which way is that?"

There was the tiniest bit of a smile. Katara considered uncorking her water jug, just in case. "Whichever way you're going."

It was supposed to irk her. It did its job. She bit her lip, thinking of something else to say. The problem was, with talking to Zuko and talking in arguments, that things got carried away really fast. They both had the wrong spots to rub, and those were the only spots they seemed to find.

"You're so annoying," she called. Like she was talking to Sokka.

"It's better than being crazy," he answered. Like this was an argument with another (unnamed, for fear of speaking it might conjure her before them, and Katara did not like lightning being shot at her) sibling, with fewer repercussions.

She turned at that one. "_Crazy?_" she asked stiffly.

"I've met quite a few women in my time," he says. "All of them could be roommates at an asylum. You are no different."

Katara could not doubt his expertise. But she had to retaliate! "At least I don't follow everyone around like a lost dog!"

Words were getting louder.

Zuko dug for just a moment's hesitation. "At least I don't fall for every guy that decides to be nice to me."

Damn it. He knew things he should not be knowing. Just because she had a weakness for the male kind in general… "_I'm_ not the one who spent the last three years with an old man, a ship full of men, chasing a twelve year old kid." Ha! Men _had_ to defend their sexuality. It was a world recognized _pastime_!

He did seem to bristle at this. A lesbian comment could not be flung back at her with the previous insult he'd already made. He was losing ground, fast. With his pondering, Katara threw in another for good effort.

"At least I _bathe._"

She could see him resist the urge to see if that was true. He did it quite gracefully.

"And what have you been doing in the past three years?" he snapped, ignoring the bathing stab. "Flitting about the world to splash in puddles?"

She pursed her lips. "Aiding the Avatar in saving the world." It sounded awfully rehearsed, she had to note. And fake. Honestly, she needed a hobby. "Took you two years to find him; took me getting angry at my brother." Stick him in the ego. He has an awfully big one.

He glared. "You're an annoying brat who travels with her brother and a little kid."

Volume grew.

"You're an egomaniac prince with only time to think on one thing at a time."

Rock was no longer so chipper.

"When this whole thing is over you're going back to that ice cube you call a home to rot away!"

"At least my 'ice cube of a home' isn't devoid of life and _humanity!_"

Trees shook and withdrew their leaves. Small animals skittered out of the way.

"Is their any real purpose to your existence besides my exasperation?!"

"Well that's one thing I can agree on! Why do you even stick around?!"

Zuko, who never really did learn to shut his mouth, and with it open so wide, just kind of slipped and fell, in the figurative sense.

"Maybe I like being around you!"

Katara was about to yell. She stopped. The trees uncurled in interest. Small animals poked their heads up. Rock, who had decisively decided to cross Katara off its buddy list, reconsidered, depending on actions following. The air was deathly still. Zuko was red. Katara was red, but she didn't want anyone to know it. Aang felt a disturbance in the force. Zuko felt his insides being eaten away by some sort of parasite. Oh, yes. He was an idiot. He would go sulk and write in his diary about how stupid he was while blasting his Linkin Park CD, if he ever knew what a Linkin Park or a CD was.

"Well maybe I like you too," Katara answered loudly. The shouting wasn't over, was it? She'd learned interesting things this way, like how she thought he was handsome, how he thought she was worth being around when they weren't yelling.

"Okay," he shouted back.

A collective sigh from the rest of the world rushed through like a wind. Aang went back to collecting rocks, finding some of them had interesting things written underneath them. He was still trying to find out what some of the words meant.

Katara wasn't quite done shouting. "What do we do now?"

Zuko shrugged. His experience in girls was limited to crazies and half-kisses. Katara kind of fit in both those categories.

"We could make out," Katara answered her own question.

Zuko shrugged.

Hours (seconds? Minutes?) later, no one really questioned why they returned together, a little bit of dirt everywhere.

Toph said it had nothing to do with that healthy coating of earth she'd been talking about.

Aang didn't get it and asked what a Zutara was.

**Notes:**

I was going to make a crack about Rock having a Zutara banner hidden beneath it. Instead I made fun of Linkin Park.

To me, emo kids and Linking Park are like peanut butter and jelly. Emo kids are fine on their own, but when they play Linkin Park it just ruins everything.

Alright, there you be. I'm going back to my Smellershot corner.


End file.
